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Google Pledges Not To Sue Any Open Source Projects Using Their Patents

Posted by Unknown on from the now-and-forever dept.

sfcrazy writes "Google has announced the Open Patent Non-Assertion (OPN) Pledge. In the pledge Google says that they will not sue any user, distributor, or developer of Open Source software on specified patents, unless first attacked. Under this pledge, Google is starting off with 10 patents relating to MapReduce, a computing model for processing large data sets first developed at Google. Google says that over time they intend to expand the set of Google's patents covered by the pledge to other technologies." This is in addition to the Open Invention Network, and their general work toward reforming the patent system. The patents covered in the OPN will be free to use in Free/Open Source software for the life of the patent, even if Google should transfer ownership to another party. Read the text of the pledge. It appears that interaction with non-copyleft licenses (MIT/BSD/Apache) is a bit weird: if you create a non-free fork it appears you are no longer covered under the pledge.

3 of 153 comments (clear)

  1. A Bit Weird? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    " It appears that interaction with non-copyleft licenses (MIT/BSD/Apache) is a bit weird: if you create a non-free fork it appears you are no longer covered under the pledge."

    That's not weird. That's exactly how it should be.

    1. Re:A Bit Weird? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Ethically, that makes this pledge worthless for anything other than GPLed software.

      So, still pretty darn useful then? Who said Google wanted to make its patents available to proprietary software that links against open-source software? They're trying to help open-source software, not proprietary software built on top of open-source software (see: Apple).

  2. Re:Darwin and Motorola by jedidiah · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Apple sells proprietary crud layered on top of free software. They generally don't want you to be even aware of the free software. They just want you to fixate on the shiny shiny proprietary bits on the surface. The fact that they exploit the free labor of hobbyists doesn't alter the basic crass nature of their activities.

    Apple are not "F/OSS developers".

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.